


Let My Second Love Be Kind

by nichestars



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Babies, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Multi, Padmé Amidala Lives, questionable use of the Force for animal noise imitations, slow burn but in 3k
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 20:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16667677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nichestars/pseuds/nichestars
Summary: When Padmé holds her children in her arms for the first time, she thinks:This is the fewest number of beings with which I have been entrusted since I was twelve years old.





	Let My Second Love Be Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/gifts).



> For the prompt "Obi-Wan/Padmé, I love this ship so much, and I wish it was canon instead of Anakin. I think he would have really respected and encouraged Padmé." I went with an au of Episode 3, included baby Luke and Leia, and hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Thank you to my betas and cheerleaders, who made this better. 
> 
> And please check out the [photoset and playlist](https://nichestars.tumblr.com/post/180938918980/let-my-second-love-be-kind-a-playlist-on-spotify) I made for this fic on tumblr, if you’re so inclined!
> 
> Please note, there is mention of domestic assault, specifically choking, in reference to Episode 3 canon.

When Padmé holds her children in her arms for the first time, she thinks: _This is the fewest number of beings with which I have been entrusted since I was twelve years old._

She has been a city supervisor, a queen, a senator—and in each of those roles she has represented her people. She has served and sacrificed for them.

Now, the Galactic Senate is in chaos, the Jedi temple is razed, the Imperial inquisitors scour the galaxy, and her homeworld mourns her. Two of the men she most trusted have revealed their true faces: one by removing a mask, one by assuming one.

Now, there may be only two beings left in the galaxy that she can hope to protect.

;;

There is, of course, also Obi-Wan.

She sees fire, smells smoke. When she wakes, he is sitting by the side of her bed, holding Luke. He looks very, very old, and Padmé is suddenly aware of her own exhaustion, the burning in her limbs as painkillers wear off, the aching emptiness that is the twins' absence from her body. She tries to clear her throat, and that hurts too. 

"Where are we?"

"Polis Massa. Senator Organa and Master Yoda are here as well, discussing our... options. I thought someone should be here with you when you woke again."

Vaguely, she remembers waking up the first time. Thrumming of droids and white noise of the ship's recycled air vents. The tang of blood in her mouth. Obi-Wan had been there, too; she remembers digging her nails into the back of his hand, and—

"Anakin is dead," she remembers.

He looks relieved as she says it. Perhaps he's only grateful not to have to give her the news a second time.

Leia stirs in the bassinet beside Padmé’s bed, so Obi-Wan lays Luke across her lap, picks Leia up, and hushes her against his shoulder as if he's done it a thousand times before.

Padmé’s stomach turns over. "How long have I been out?"

"Only six hours or so," Obi-Wan says, quietly. "The droids said you were stable, but they couldn't tell when you would wake."

Padmé shivers, and runs her hand over Luke's belly. Letting her palm rest on his ribs, she feels the rapid, shallow breathing, and closes her eyes. Tries to reconcile this _child_ to the swimming sensation she had felt under her hand on so many sleepless nights.

She opens her eyes and looks at Leia cradled against Obi-Wan's chest. The way her tiny fist uncurls as she lets herself be soothed by his low voice. The delicate line of her nose and mouth in profile.

The exhaustion in Padmé’s bones is driven out by the intense need to protect, to defend, these two tiny, infinitely breakable creatures.

Anakin will never meet his children.

Padmé remembers: fire, smoke, blood, rage, yellow eyes, and thinks, _good_.

;;

They are on Tatooine two months before they hear the first reports of the man in the mask. 

Padmé had been here, had seen Anakin's face when he returned to the Lars' homestead with his mother's body, and she had known then he would never come back to this planet. They would be safe here.

But who knows how much of Anakin Skywalker is left inside that suit of armor, that walking tank of misery and murder. Nowhere in the galaxy is safe from Darth Vader.

She's never seen Obi-Wan as still, as silent, as he is that first night they hear the reports over the scanner. Three more Jedi hunted down and butchered. One just a child apprentice.

 _Like Snips_ , Padmé thinks, and something clenches in her chest.

Obi-Wan turns the dial off, and the small farmhouse sits quiet under the rising moons. They're not far from Owen and Beru's place — close enough that Beru can visit the children, and for a moment, Padmé considers taking them to spend the night with their aunt and uncle. She doesn't want to leave Obi-Wan alone even that long.

The lightsaber is missing from beside his bed pallet when she looks into his room after putting the twins to sleep.

Fear creeps up her throat like the fingers of a memory.

She shuts off the lights and closes the back door behind her carefully. She's sure he hears her approaching–-she means to be heard, lets her shoe catch a twig in the dusty courtyard between the house and the barn.

He leans against the fence, watching their three banthas shuffle in their nightly bedding routine. The air is dry, but smells like the fresh hay he'd brought back from the market with Owen the week before.

Obi-Wan moves the hilt of the saber from palm to palm, fingers clenching on the grip on each pass. 

"I should have killed him," he says.

The dry, cool wind curls around Padmé's ankles, coming down out of the canyons behind the homestead. 

"I thought I had," he says.

She wraps her arms around herself and watches the baby bantha press closer to its mother. 

"I thought I loved him," she says. 

They're saving credits to buy another cow at auction, and by next season their little herd could be doubled.

"Which of us was more the fool?"

;;

The twins are fickle constituents. 

No matter how much of Padmé’s time she devotes to them, they want more. She can’t do anything right, even if she’s doing exactly what they wanted a moment before. 

“They’re _babies_ ,” she tells Obi-Wan bitterly, mopping spit-up off the front of her dress and Luke’s face for the fourth time that evening. 

Obi-Wan’s smile is a hesitant, wary thing, but it turns up the corners of his mouth. He puts down the holopad he was reading. 

“They are twelve weeks old,” he says, mildly, and takes Luke from her arms. 

The tears come, sudden and stinging, before Padmé realizes she’s going to cry, and she slumps in the middle of the kitchen floor. Across the room, Leia starts screaming, hungry or tired or maybe just bored. Padmé’s chest constricts. Her dress is a mess of spit-up and snot and leaking milk, and she looks up at Obi-Wan hopelessly. 

He now has a twin in each arm, and is frowning slightly as Leia’s greedy hand curls in his beard. 

“It almost makes one miss the Senate,” he says, and Padmé’s laughter feels like relief. 

;;

The twins start sleeping through the night. This brings new terrors. At least if they are screaming and demanding to be held, she knows that they are breathing: waking up to their silence is worse. Padmé starts sleeping on the floor beside their bed, counting moments between their inhales and exhales. 

Sometimes when she starts awake, Obi-Wan is hunched over the crib. Awareness filters in to take the place of panic as Padmé reaches in and feels the twins’ chests still rising and falling in steady harmony. Obi-Wan is equally steady: his watchfulness does not ease her worry, exactly, but it is comforting in its own way to recognize the same fears in each other. 

“What is it?” she asks, one early morning — the sky is still dark, pin-pricked with stars through the window — when Obi-Wan’s head is cocked as if he’s listening for something, his hand curled over Luke’s downsoft hair. 

“They’re dreaming,” Obi-Wan says, stretching slowly, blinking at her in the dim light. 

Before she can ask, he reaches his hand out, and she takes it, pulling herself up to stand next to him. 

“Close your eyes,” he says, and when she does, it is morning, and they are in a meadow. 

The twins are laughing, stuffing round flower-heads in their mouths, pulling up fistfuls of leaves so green it makes Padmé’s eyes ache. She can feel the sun-warm grass between her toes as she walks towards them. 

Obi-Wan lets go of her hand, and she opens her eyes. Luke and Leia are smiling, curled together in the crib, unperturbed. 

After that, Padmé sleeps a little easier. 

It was a good dream. 

;;

When _she_ dreams, it is of Coruscant: of the temple gardens and children meditating under the canopy of fruit trees. 

Obi-Wan guides her and a small bevy of newly elected senators through the grounds. She had been so pleased when he was announced to be their host; she was two years older than the last time they met, and he was still so much taller than she was. He had grown a beard, too, but she could still see the freckles underneath his mustache and down his forearms. 

“I believe you may remember one of our students, as well,” Obi-Wan had said, and he turns, extending his hand—

Anakin is standing in the orchard, and there are flames licking up the roots of the trees, red and yellow and black like his eyes.

And Padmé wakes, clutching her chest, choking.

;;

When Anakin tells her, with great relish, of his master and the Duchess Satine, Padmé laughs.

It seems impossible that Obi-Wan would fall in love with anyone. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s dedication to the Jedi Order is one of very few things in the galaxy that remain black and white: to imagine him choosing anything over that commitment is preposterous.

Somehow, it never seemed impossible that Anakin would choose her over the Order. 

In retrospect, Padmé realizes perhaps that should have been more discomforting than romantic.

Now Obi-Wan has chosen against the Order twice. Once, when he left Anakin on Mustafar, and again when he accompanied her and the twins to Tatooine, staying to protect Anakin’s children rather than searching out other survivors.

She wonders if he despises himself for those choices the way that she does herself for leaving the Senate in chaos, for letting her family and her planet believe she is dead, for abandoning a resistance barely older than her children.

They are, after all, the reason for both her choices and Obi-Wan's.

Her Luke and Leia, her twins. 

She catches Obi-Wan watching them, and feels her heart ache with the same fears, the same hope.

That one day, they will be the chance to make these wrong choices right.

;;

“Padmé.” His voice is hushed, warm in the dark beside her ear. She’s awake so fast her head reels. 

“What is it?”

“Tuskens, on the ridge. I’ve sent a comm to Lars, but—” 

Padmé nods. They’ve discussed this, practiced it. Somehow it was scarier then, in peaceful daylight, than it is now in the reality of night with adrenaline setting her blood on fire. 

They swaddle the twins, and Obi-Wan presses his fingertips to their temples, pushing them deeper into sleep. 

Downstairs, there’s a false floor in the cellar. The twins fit neatly into the recessed pod, packed like two small nuts in a single shell, and Padmé checks the oxy-tank twice before closing the lid, securing the latch. Even if the house burns, the pump has air for twelve hours, and Owen and Beru know where to look for them. 

Padmé checks the safety on her blaster, and the two of them move silently upstairs. 

The sun is not yet risen, and in the dim light it's hard to judge time. Obi-Wan motions with his chin towards the back door. Padmé flicks the locks open, and steps back into the protection of the thick dirt wall, letting the door swing open on its own. There’s no noise in the yard. 

Together, they follow the shadow of the house across to the barn. This time, Obi-Wan opens the door, and Padmé steps inside, blaster ready. The banthas are chewing their cud and barely look up. 

Padmé motions to the loft, and Obi-Wan nods, points back towards the door of the barn. He slips outside again as Padmé climbs the ladder one-handed, keeping her blaster ahead of her. There’s nothing there, either, but as Padmé begins the climb down, a terrible noise echoes in the courtyard. 

It’s an old noise, creaky and aching, like something has sucked the air out of the very rocks in the hills with its screaming. 

Padmé shudders and drops the last couple rungs to the floor of the barn, moving to the doorway. Out the crack of the door, she sees Obi-Wan standing in the yard, his face lifted to the dark sky. 

His mouth opens and the noise comes again. The banthas stamp, huffing and restless. Padmé’s eyes raise to the hills, above the house. The skyline is empty. The Tuskens are gone.

She jumps when Obi-Wan pushes the barn door open. 

“What was that?” she asks, still watching the horizon over the door hinge. “The noise?”

Obi-Wan rubs his face, and looks almost embarrassed. “A very poor impression of a krayt dragon, I’m afraid,” he says, finally. 

Padmé’s adrenaline seems to evaporate into giddiness, and she laughs silently, a hand to her mouth. He makes her laugh so easily, these days, and she’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion or for want of company, but she’s glad of it, as they lean into each other in the dark. 

“It fooled me for a moment,” she admits, and his chest vibrates against her arm; he’s as relieved as she is. 

Later, after settling the banthas with fresh hay and checking every door in the house, Obi-Wan pours water into the electro-kettle, and takes down two mugs from the shelf. They’re mismatched, earthenware fired with a glaze that’s spotted on the handles from age, but Beru had packed them carefully in a box with other kitchen supplies and had Owen bring them over the day they arrived. They’ve bought other cups since, but the mugs are comforting. 

He makes the tea too strong, and then pours in milk until it’s pale, the way they’ve discovered they like drinking it here. Padmé’s hands are cold, and she wraps them around the mug gratefully. 

“What would we have done if your imitation didn’t work?” She asks. 

“I would’ve tried to reason with them,” Obi-Wan says, but he sounds more tired than sure. 

His saber sits on the tabletop between them.

 _I killed them_ , Anakin had said. _I killed them all._

“Padmé,” he says, more quietly, “Whatever happened, I would not let them hurt the children.” 

_They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too._

“I know,” Padmé says, and drinks her tea.

;;

Spring comes to Tatooine, which means the days begin warm and build to sweltering. Everyone in Mos Eisley says the rain is coming soon, and Obi-Wan decides it’s time for bantha-shearing.

They take the twins to the Lars’ homestead, leaving them in Beru’s capable hands so they can spend the rest of the day working with the little herd. The big beasts are gentle enough-–they love Obi-Wan, the same easy way the twins and every other creature they’ve encountered seem to–-but they’re shy, wary of the noise the electro-clippers make. 

Obi-Wan has fashioned a makeshift chute between the gate of the fence and the barn door, and he holds their bridles, shushes them as Padme works around them. If she’s careful, the winter growth comes off in large swaths: some they’ll keep for use around the house, stuffing blankets for the twins for the next cold season, the drop spindle Beru has promised to teach Padme how to use; some they’ll take to market to be processed and sold for extra credits. 

By noon, they’re both as sweaty and uncomfortable as the banthas, and they stop for water and shade. Obi-Wan stretches out on the dirt floor of the kitchen, hair in his eyes, and falls asleep. 

Padme lets him rest, watching the steady rise of his chest, counting the new freckles up the backs of his hands, across the bridge of his nose. 

The house is absolutely silent, without the twins, with the only noise the soft familiarity of the winds coming off the hills, the banthas moving in the yard outside. When they first arrived, she had thought it would feel remote, lonely, here in a little house on the edge of the dunes, half an hour from their closest neighbors and longer still to the nearest outpost. 

She’s never felt lonely with Obi-Wan here.

She fights the urge to touch the sunburn blossoming along his cheeks. 

;;

By the time they finish, it’s nearly dark, and Owen has sent a holo offering to keep the twins for the night. Beru’s offered before, but this is the first time Padme feels comfortable accepting. Obi-Wan refills the fresher pump so there’s enough water for both of them to take cool showers, and they eat a light supper, still too warm to be properly hungry.

The twin suns set over the ridge as they feed the newly-shorn banthas, and Padme sits on the fence next to Obi-Wan, watching the sky turn pink and purple. 

“Anakin told me something, once,” she says. 

Obi-Wan’s mouth turns up as he glances over at her. “Which was?”

“That you were in love with Satine.” It hurts, to say her friend’s name aloud, even here, even now. For years, Padme had asked what she might have done, what aid Naboo might have sent to Mandalore. 

Obi-Wan is quiet. 

“I’m sorry, it sounds callous to say it like that,” Padme frowns.

“I did not take it that way at all,” Obi-Wan says, and when she looks at him, he’s smiling slightly. “I was, for a very long time. Longer than I realized, maybe.” 

“I’m sorry,” Padme says, again. She reaches for her throat instinctively: the japor snippet is long buried in her empty casket on Naboo, but sometimes she swears she can still feel it around her neck.

“I loved him, too,” Obi-Wan says, and this time he looks away, his jaw set tightly. 

Padme nods. She’s known for a while: longer than she realized, maybe.

The sky’s purple has darkened to blue before she speaks again. 

“I didn’t believe him, then. I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did,” she admits. 

Obi-Wan’s shoulders seem to settle, relaxing. “So it’s easier to believe now that you know me better?” His tone is gently teasing. 

Padme scoffs. “Infinitely. I’ve seen you talking to the banthas, I know you have a heart.” 

She means it as a joke, but as she says it, the words stick in her throat: Padme has seen his heart, every day since Mustafar: in the way he cares for the twins, in the way he cares for her. She licks her lips, and watches Obi-Wan’s eyes follow the movement. 

She kisses him before he can look up again, reeling him in with a hand twisted in the rough front of his dirty tunic. He tastes _warm_ , and his skin is hot to the touch with sunburn, but he doesn’t pull away. 

His hands find her waist, and Padme closes her eyes, and for a moment as the stars come out, the galaxy is only as large as the two of them, the house behind them, and the dunes they’ll cross in the morning to pick up the twins.


End file.
